Etheric awareness

Eat pizza, eat pasta, lose weight. Go figure.

Written by Karen Kingston Saturday, 08 May 2010 20:39

I was in Italy for a couple of weeks last month, eating pizza and pasta every day. It was my first ever visit there and I expected to put on a few pounds. To my surprise, the opposite happened. I lost weight.

The food there is incredible. I haven't tasted fruit or vegetables like that ever in my life before. We're talking orally orgasmic strawberries. Peas so fresh from the pod that they ignite ecstatic sweet green taste explosions in your mouth. Gorgonzola that almost has a pulse. We bought everything we could find just to try it. I could go on and on.

And that's just the food in its raw state, never mind the amazing things Italians do when they cook. The most memorable lunch we had was (on the house!) in the famous Ristorante Puny in Portafino, owned by an old friend of my husband's. OMG. Simple food, just pasta and prawns, but cooked like they must serve in heaven. It brought new parts of my etheric alive that I never knew existed.

And that, I think, is the reason why Italian pizza and pasta is not fattening. Food in Italy is freshly made with such fresh ingredients that it's energetically vital. It feeds the etheric rather than clogging it, and passes easily through the body in a matter of hours. Processed pizza and pasta, by comparison, is energetically dead. It lands in the stomach like a problem that needs to be dissolved and disposed of, putting a much greater burden on the digestive system and lingering there for a day or two.

I also suspect most Italian wheat is grown organically and eaten pretty quickly rather than being stored in repetitively pesticide-sprayed grain mountains for years as in other countries of the world. I say this because I didn't experience the usual intestinal irritation I've come to expect from eating wheat products. It was cleaner, kinder and my body recognized it as food.

Italy, of course, is where the Slow Food Movement started in 1986, and continues to gather momentum. They take food very seriously there. Richard warned me the chef would probably come out of the kitchen and kill me if I put parmesan on my prawn linguine. Certain things you just don't do there.

Of course Italy does have some fast food restaurants and you can find a small selection of factory-made pizzas in supermarkets. But the majority of restaurants make everything to order, and even supermarkets have not really caught on there. From what I saw, people still prefer to visit their local baker, grocer and butcher to buy food at its freshest, and absolutely everyone you meet has a recommendation for THE best pizza restaurant in the whole of Italy.

Yes, there are signs of obesity now, as everywhere in the western world. But you know what? I really don't think it's pizza or pasta related. It's more to do with the huge amounts of sugar many italians consume now (think Italian ice creams), the vast quantities of bread (made mostly with refined white flour), and the coffee-hyped stressful lifestyle of those who live in cities (Italians drink way more coffee than Americans).

I'm now seriously considering teaching a Space Clearing practitioner training in Italy some day, probably for advanced students rather than new trainees because they would feel the effects of the etheric vitality of the food more and be able to use it to access new levels of awareness and perception.

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Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Written by Karen Kingston Monday, 12 April 2010 08:46

Following his amazing success in the UK, Jamie Oliver, a famous UK chef, has launched his "Food Revolution" in the USA, aimed at tackling the nationwide epidemic of obesity. In the UK he has already revolutionized school dinners.  On his website he writes:

"Disgusted at what rubbish our kids were getting fed at school, I signed up as a dinner lady to make the Jamie's School Dinners TV series. I wanted to show how little government was spending and demand proper standards to get rid of the junk. I had to prove that, for the same price as a bag of crisps, only 37p, I could produce a properly cooked, nutritious meal at lunchtime. I had no idea that School Dinners was going to start such a massive campaign and that it would get support from parents, teachers, kids and even a few governments all over the world."

Now he's in the USA, intent on bringing about a similar change in eating habits, especially for children.

Watch the trailer for his series on ABC
Watch episodes of his shows
Want to take action?

Here in Europe I have only been able to see shorts from the episodes, but they're brilliant and also really shocking, especially the one where he holds up vegetables and asks school children to identify them (they can't). If you're in the USA you can watch full episodes online.

Sign Jamie's petition to improve school foods in the USA

His target is 1,000,000 signatures in 6 weeks and he's already got over 250,000. If you don't live in the USA there's a link on the page to a global petition you can sign, which I've done.

Improving people's quality of life is part of my personal mission, and although I don't write about it much, food is a big part of this. I have huge admiration for the down-to-earth way Jamie Oliver gets out there, gets people involved and shows them how to change their lives for the better by changing the food they eat. It takes serious balls to do what he's doing.

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Air fresheners

Written by Karen Kingston Monday, 12 April 2010 08:02

Reading Julie Braden's recent article, Air Fresheners and Health Don't Mix, reminded me that many people really don't know how toxic synthetic car and home air fresheners are.

I won't tolerate them for a minute when travelling in a friend's car and have been known to refuse public taxis until one comes along that is air freshener free. I'm not allergic to them as she is. I just know how harmful most of them are and choose not to sit in a confined space breathing in the vapours. If people knew what was in them, I think most would do so too.

The majority of air fresheners work by producing a chemical reaction in our nasal passages that trick us into thinking the smell is no longer there. It is. We just can't smell it any more.

The way this effect is achieved, it amazes me that it's even allowed. A study conducted by Anne Steinemann of the University of Washington in 2008 found that the most common household air fresheners (including the so-called 'green' ones or those with 'essential oils') emit substances that have no safe exposure level according to federal standards. They often contain chemicals such as formaldehyde, phthalates, toluene, styrene, acetone, acetaldehyde, 1,4-dichlorobenzene and chloromethane. All of these are hazardous to health in some way. Some are known carcinogens. What the heck are they thinking putting these ingredients into scented products designed to be inhaled?

Another University of Washington study in 2009 (Steinemann & Caress) found that 20% of the general population and 34% of people suffering from asthma get headaches or experience breathing difficulties when exposed to air fresheners. There have been many other studies done that show air fresheners are far from safe. Yet still they continue to be sold by the truckload. Global retail sales are expected to top $7 billion in the USA this year. It's big business.

And don't get me started on scented candles. There are many health hazards with these too, even with the essential oil type. The idea of using air fresheners or scented candles to improve the quality of a space is fundamentally flawed.

Further reading: Air Fresheners and Health Don't Mix by Julie Braden

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Understanding chi

Written by Karen Kingston Saturday, 26 September 2009 08:43

Feng shui books frequently talk about balancing, harmonizing and enhancing chi, but what exactly is chi? Can you see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it? Is there good chi, bad chi, neutral chi? Does it come in different strengths and flavours?

While western science still disputes the existence of anything that can’t be physically calibrated, Chinese medical practitioners, for thousands of years, have had a healthcare system that aims to treat medical disorders before they even show in the physical body (hence the age old Chinese practice of paying your physician only when you are well). Their system works at the level of chi.

Beyond physicality
The starting point for understanding chi is therefore to appreciate that the world consists of very much more than just the physical things we can see. Physicality is just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond this there are worlds upon worlds of more rarefied and non-dimensional realities, which are just as tangible as the physical realms if you are able to discern them. They can't be felt with our ordinary physical senses but it is possible to develop other organs of perception in our subtle bodies. Over a period of time, the level of functionality that can be built up is quite extraordinary.

Imagine, for example, that you lived in a culture where for some reason it was taboo to use your arms. As you gre up, they just withered and hung uselessly from your shoulders.

Then supposing one day you meet someone who says, "Hey, do you know you can use those?"

"For what?" you ask, incredulously.

"For so many things!"

And then the person teaches you how to begin to move your arms. It would be nothing more than a few jerky spasms at first but gradually, if you worked at it, you'd build muscle and be able to move your fingers, turn your wrist, bend your elbow, move your arm, and pick up weights. One miraculous day you’d be able to use this previously pathetic appendage to drink a cup of tea! And that’s just the beginning. You could go on to learn how to write, create handicrafts, paint masterpieces… the list is endless.

The human possibility
There are parts of the human that have fallen into just such disuse in modern times, to the extent that most people don't even know they exist, never mind how to use them. The focus these days is on breaking the latest speed record, accomplishing physical feats that will go in the Guinness Book of Records, and anything that will push the physical body to new limits.

But this all amounts to very little when compared to the vast unexplored worlds of human consciousness and subtle bodies of energy. It was this quest that led me many years ago to the discovery of chi, and it was working with chi that led me to the discovery of the principles of Space Clearing and Feng Shui, and from there to the workings of high spiritual realms.

In my book, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui, I describe how it is possible to go around the inside perimeter of a home, sensing the energies and reading the entire history of what has happened in a space. Every event leaves an imprint in the walls that can be read through the hands just as clearly as reading a book with your eyes. And - as with the analogy of the arms - this is just the beginning. There's a vast kaleidoscope of possibility that opens up once a person's etheric 'muscle' has started to work.

Awareness of chi
Anyone can develop the ability to sense energies if they're prepared to work at it. The problem is that western civilization is characterized by etheric numbness. Many people don’t even know what their etheric feels like.

Here's something you can do next time you visit the ocean: Observe what part of you likes to be there. The sound of the waves breaking on the shore is good to listen to, yes, but there's something more. The ocean is wonderful to look at, yes, but there's something more. The part of you that really resonates with the ocean is not the physical you at all. It's your etheric, which is made of chi.

The etheric is a subtle body of energy that permeates the physical structures of all humans, animals and plants. It's what makes things grow and gives vitality. It's life force energy. Children, of course, have oodles of energy and are very much based in their etheric. No wonder they love to visit the sea!

Here's something else you can try: When you have a massage, don’t just lie there passively as the practitioner moves energies around your body. Actively realign your energies from the inside as the therapist works on you from the outside. With a capable practitioner, superb results can be obtained by this method of teamwork; with the wrong practitioner, it is frustrating, disorientating and worse than having no massage at all.

As your etheric awareness increases, by the way, you’ll become more selective about who you allow to work on your body in this way. A massage therapist who has not developed etheric awareness and skill will not know how to cleanse their own energies while working on clients and will pass toxins from one client to another.

Feng Shui and chi
Feng Shui mastery rests on cultivating awareness of chi in the environment, which must begin with cultivating etheric awareness in yourself. To learn feng shui intellectually without being able to feel the energies on which it is based can only give you second-hand knowledge, which won’t take you very far at all. So here are some things you can check to see how etherically based you are…

Do you wear shoes or slippers at home, or walk barefoot? Do you wear lots of jewellery or very little? Is your home cluttered or clutter-free? Do you enjoy being in Nature? Do you sleep with the windows closed at night, or do you always open a window to allow chi to circulate in the space? Do you eat junk food or mostly fresh, healthy food?

The frequently barefooted, lesser-jewelled, clutter-free, Nature-loving person with a well-ventilated bedroom and healthy diet is far more in tune with their etheric than the opposite case. If you are able to feel your etheric, living this way feels natural and right.

I'm sure that the great Feng Shui masters of old had profound levels of etheric mastery, and it was upon this that their expertise rested. To awaken your etheric is no easy task these days but it can be done and is very worthwhile.

Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2009

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Supersense

Written by Karen Kingston Tuesday, 08 September 2009 10:57

Could you wear a killer's cardigan?

This is one of many provocative questions raised in a book I read recently by Bruce M. Hood called Supersense: Why We Believe The Unbelievable, published in 2008 by HarperOne. Hood is chair of the Cognitive Development Center in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol.

In his public lectures, he says he often does an experiment where he passes a fountain pen around the audience that he pretends once belonged to Albert Einstein. "The reverence and awe towards this object is palpable," he says. "Everyone wants to hold it. Touching the pen makes them feel good."

Then he produces a cardigan and asks who would be willing to put it on. Usually at least a third of the people in the audience volunteer to do so, until he reveals (another pretence) that it once belonged to Fred West, a well-known English serial killer. Immediately most of the hands go down and people visibly recoil from those who adamantly keep their hands up. "Typically they are male and determined to demonstrate their rational control," he says. "Or they suspect, rightly, that I was lying about the owner of the cardigan."

Paul Rozin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who specializes in research on the unusual topic of the origin, evolution and meaning of disgust, confirms that "more people would rather wear a cardigan that has been dropped in dog faeces and then washed than one that has also been cleaned and worn by a murderer."

Hood asks in his book, "How and why should a cardigan come to represent the negative association with a killer? If I had chosen a knife or noose, the association account would have been adequate. A cardigan is not an item usually linked to murderers. It is something that offers warmth and comfort." He concludes that "The Fred West cardigan stunt triggers mostly a sense of spiritual, not physical, contamination. You can't wash away such contamination as though it were dirt."

He goes on to explore in his book the many types of 'supersense' humans have. It's a great read but, since he doesn't  have any awareness of etheric and astral imprints, he concludes in the end that "supernatural thinking is simply the natural consequence of failing to match our intuitions with the true reality of the world." He comes very close at times to recognizing that objects can have an energetic as well as physical component but never actually accepts it, in spite of the overwhelming evidence in his studies of so many people innately believing it to be true.

My perception, after years of energy sensing objects of all kinds, is that laundering clothing removes all imprints. So putting on Fred West's freshly laundered cardigan presents no problem at all energetically.

However, if it hasn't been washed, that's a completely different matter. Particularly if he wore it frequently and even more so if he wore it recently, it will be saturated with his imprints. This will have an energetic effect on any wearer, as people intuitively know. And as I explain in the Clutter and Feng Shui Symbology chapter of the new edition of my Clear Your Clutter book, if a person knows the history of an item and has a negative association with it, then just the sight of it will evoke those feelings and no amount of Space Clearing will change that. So if someone knows it is Fred West's cardigan, even if it has been laundered a hundred times, they are likely to feel energetically contaminated if they come into contact with it even though they haven't been.

I love questions like this because they illustrate so clearly something we all know and feel, but most people don't know why.

Further reading: Does Space Clearing really clear imprints?

Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2009

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Building etheric awareness

Written by Karen Kingston Saturday, 20 June 2009 22:41

Wikipedia defines hypermiling as the act of driving using techniques that maximize fuel economy. Hypermilers hold rallies where the winner is the one who gets the best mileage, based on the number of miles travelled divided by the US Environmental Protection Agency's fuel-economy rating for the vehicle they are driving. So it’s a level playing field, whether someone is driving a gas-guzzling old banger or a state of the art hybrid car.

The king of hypermilers is said to be Wayne Gerdes, who holds the record for getting 164.5 miles per gallon (about 70 km per liter) out of a Honda Insight.

Personally I like to drive fast. Hypermilers drive slowly, accelerating and braking as little as possible to save on fuel. But some of their practices are very interesting in terms of the energetic awareness they build.

For example, I hear that many hypermilers like to drive barefoot so that they can feel what's happening with the car more intimately. This creates a much more etheric relationship with it than driving with shoes on. I know, because I always drive barefoot myself for this reason.

They also have a practice known as ridge riding. Do you realize that gleefully driving your car at high speed through a big puddle of water uses up extra fuel? Hypermilers try to find all the small ridges on a road and avoid the troughs worn by other drivers’ tyres, especially the valleys filled with puddles. It takes a certain level of etheric sensitivity to find ridges like this. I bet some of them are borderline if not full-on obsessive compulsives, but if done in moderation, it’s a great way to build awareness.

I was struck by the words of one hypermiler, Jack Martin, talking about what happens when being overtaken on the road. He said, “When a vehicle goes by, you feel it initially suck on you a little bit and then push you. If you're sensitive to that, you can work it, like a porpoise riding the waves created by a boat. You start looking at it as energy around you.”

In our fast moving world it’s so easy to be swept along. I dare say that if I got stuck behind a hypermiler I’d be as frustrated with their slow pace as the next person, but on the other hand, I bet they suffer far less stress in their lives and live longer as a result.  

Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2009

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